


you can bury my strength

by lovetincture



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Consent Issues, Gen, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:06:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26854924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Sam can't sleep. Dean helps. That should be a good thing.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 64
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	you can bury my strength

**Author's Note:**

> This is both Day 6 of Whumptober and the fic I wrote for a fic/art collab with [thegoodthebadandtheart](https://thegoodthebadandtheart.tumblr.com/). Go check out their stuff! Their art is rad.
> 
> prompt: sleep deprivation

The shiny, bright edges of the kitchen table are hurting his eyes. Something about their sleek chrome feels suspicious, muddled and hard in a way that alarms him. He can’t quite put his finger on why, and it’s frustrating.

Dean slaps him on the back, and Sam nearly twitches out of his skin.

“You alright, man?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Sam smiles, the corners of his mouth pulled as he makes the face that’s supposed to mean reassurance.

He doesn’t do it right because Dean gives him that all too familiar  _ look, _ the one that goes ‘something’s wrong with Sammy,’ but he says uh-huh, and brushes past Sam on his way to the coffee machine, hand skimming Sam’s back in a familiar curl.

Sam stares down into the pit of his own cup, nothing but brown slurry at the bottom. When Dean comes back, he sticks it out in a silent ask.

“Please,” he adds, and Dean sighs, but he does take Sam’s cup. He returns it a few seconds later, slides in front of Sam, hot and steaming with the bitter, warm scent of arabica beans searing nose. His hand twitches around the handle.

“You look like crap,” Dean says out of nowhere.

Sam snorts softly. “I’m just tired. Long night.”

“All work and no play. You should get out more. Live a little.”

“How do you know I wasn’t?”

“Were you?” Dean asks, eyebrow raised.

“No.”

“I know you,” Dean says. “That’s how I know.” And it’s not meant to be fond. It’s not meant to be anything but meaningless banter, the call and response of their lives, arms twitching across the void to pat down shoulders, faces, arms. Signs of life meant to signal  _ I’m here. I hear you. _

Sam blinks. It didn’t mean anything. Dean certainly didn’t mean it as an insult, but somehow it guts him all the way through.

* * *

Sam thinks about it later when he still can’t sleep.

The bunker showers are long and cavernous, some kind of cross between high school locker rooms the world over and the honest to god Batcave. Sam has the heat turned up nearly as high as it’ll go, the water pinking his skin, scouring him clean as a boiled lobster.

He thought a hot shower would be soothing. He thought, but it wasn’t, and then it became an excuse to hurt himself, and that was almost just as good. The steam is thick and heavy in the room, fogging up the old mirrors made of what he suspects is real silver with tarnished flecks of black showing through. It rises into his lungs, choking him almost like a caress. For a minute he feels dizzy, and that’s almost like feeling tired. He thinks maybe he’ll finally get some sleep.

It rises up in him like a wave, sudden and undeniable, and he looks around for a second. It takes a few seconds longer to decide he’d really rather not crack his head on the tile. He’s too tired for the indecision to scare him. He sits down, bare ass on the unpleasantly slick porcelain, and tries not to think about it. He wonders what Dean would think if he walked in right now. He puts his head between his knees and breathes.

The room is like a sauna by the time the blackness in front of his eyes recedes enough that he can get to his feet without falling. He turns off the shower, burning himself on the pipe in the process. His knees wobble disconcertingly. He doesn’t black out.

Dean finds him in his room later, when he’s bundled up in a pair of soft pants and a thermal shirt and flannel, all the cherry-pink heat from his shower sealed in beneath his skin. Dean leans against the open door and goes over the hunt they’re planning for tomorrow, travel times and destinations, the research Sam had scrounged up from the internet and the depths of the Men of Letters library.

Sam nods when he’s supposed to. He feels himself zone out, but his mouth keeps moving. He holds up his end of the conversation, and Dean doesn’t notice. His awareness of himself clicks back into place right around the time that Dean leaves. “0800 tomorrow,” he says, rapping his fist twice against Sam’s door for emphasis before pulling it shut.

Sam can’t remember anything about the conversation except it happened. A few seconds later, he starts to doubt even that much.

He’s already in bed, so he tugs the pillow under his head, turning on his side so he can watch the orange flicker of the lightbulb that needs to be changed. Tonight, he thinks, he’ll sleep.

It doesn’t happen.

* * *

Sam figures he’ll sleep in the car, but then, he’s been wrong before too.

* * *

“When’s the last time you slept?” Dean asks on the outskirts of Des Moines.

An obnoxiously yellow sign promises that the people of Iowa welcome them.

“Dunno,” Sam says, too tired to lie.

It feels like a herculean effort to move his eyes over to where Dean is, Dean in the driver’s seat. Dean’s eyes are worried and tight, and there’s a grim set to his mouth that sparks something animal and craven at the base of Sam’s spine.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll catch a nap on our way into town. Don’t worry about it.”

“Sam,” Dean starts. He doesn’t finish the thought. He sounds frustrated and tired, and Sam thinks—hey, that’s my line.

He starts laughing to himself, and Dean looks alarmed.

“Cut it out,” he says, but Sam can’t stop.

* * *

He hasn’t slept in four days, but who’s counting.

He hasn’t slept in four days but it takes seven for a person to go actually, certifiably insane.

He hasn’t slept in four days, but at least Lucifer is capital-D dead.

He really doesn’t feel well.

* * *

He should’ve known, really. He should’ve known that Dean’s calm silence and quiet glances hid something terrible. He should’ve, but then— that’s the thing, isn’t it? Sam Winchester always trusts his big brother, always and forever. Forever and ever, amen.

“Drugging me,” Sam says through slurred lips. He licks the last of the orange juice off his lip as Dean carefully takes the cup away and sets it on the nightstand before it can fall. “That’s new.”

Dean freezes. Sam watches the tense line of his back, the profile turned away from him. He looks and looks, but he can’t tell if Dean feels guilty. His limbs just feel so heavy.

“Do you want me to say I’m sorry?” Dean asks.

“Are you?”

The stony, pained expression tells Sam everything he needs to know. Fuck Dean’s pain.

“Fuck you.”

Dean sighs. He sounds so tired. “Yeah, Sammy. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He squeezes Sam’s foot, and Sam kicks him away. Sam grabs for Dean’s arm, but he can’t quite reach.

There was more he wanted to say—more, but the tidal blackness of sleep is rushing up to take him, filling his lungs with tar. He gasps, and thoughts fizzle up to the surface—central nervous system depressants, increased risk of sleepwalking. Jess used to be on Ambien. He remembers reading her scrips. He should tell Dean to take his gun.

He opens his mouth, but he’s not sure if it comes out. His eyes are so heavy, and someone is moving his limbs.  _ Dean, _ his brain supplies, fighting against the sick rabbiting in his heart.  _ Dean, it’s Dean. _

He feels his pants slide down his hips. Someone’s tugging at his shoes. It’s just Dean. It’s just Dean. That should make it better, not worse.

The last thought he remembers is  _ not again. _

**Author's Note:**

> [let me make mistakes if I want to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJIbAkDgy24) | Say hi on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture)


End file.
